Soprano  Johanna  Meier

A Conversation with Bruce Duffie

where you don't know how Traviata ends."

BD:    Let's start with Wagner.  You were the first American soprano to sing Isolde at Bayreuth?

JM:    That's true.  I was the thirteenth Isolde since the beginning of the festival, but the first American.

BD:    Is Bayreuth special to you?

JM:    Yes, of course.  Singing there has to be one of the things that everybody who sings Wagner dreams of doing.  It is really a particular kind of atmosphere and a very special place to perform.  For an American singer, it's particularly impressive because we have, unfortunately, become kind of inured in this country in the last 10 or 12 years to working under rather difficult conditions with lots of union problems and strikes and that constant pressure of not enough money for sufficient rehearsals.  To go into an atmosphere like Bayreuth, where absolutely everyone is so concerned with the excellence of the production, is really a marvelous experience.

BD:    Are you a team of equals?

JM:    It absolutely is, and everything is done there on the premises.  All the scenery and costumes are made there, and it is fun to wander out in the workshops and hear carpenters whistling snatches of Wagner and to hear seamstresses quoting lines to one another.  They are all so much into it.  It's not a fast buck for them or just a job, it's really an endeavor.  Everybody is interested in the performances and in wanting to make them as fine as they can be.  It's a very special atmosphere of dedication which everybody has from Mr. Wagner right down to the lowliest employee.

BD:    Is it special to work with Wagner's grandson?

JM:    Yes, certainly.  He is a very, very nice man.  I met him first when I went to sing for him there on the stage a year and a half ago.  It was during the early spring, and the house is not heated.  It's used only in the summertime and not during the rest of the year.  Some of the offices are heated, but the auditorium is not, so I had to do the audition in my winter coat, and I could see my breath in front of me as I sang.  We all went in there just freezing to death, and I told him I was sorry not to know any Eskimo songs...  But he was very personable and very nice at our first meeting, and this was certainly reinforced by knowing him during the summer.  He is a very cordial man and has a very good rapport with his performers.  I think he is also a very clever man and has handled the festival very well.

BD:    Tell me about the acoustics.  Is it different singing on that stage from any other stage in the world?

JM:    Strangely enough, they are perhaps slightly more difficult for us on the stage than in some other places because of the placement of the orchestra.  The orchestral sound comes up onto the stage with a tremendous roar, and you have the feeling that you are being absolutely engulfed by this big orchestral sound.  You have to be very careful not to abandon your principles of singing and try to match that great sound.  You have to remember that when it comes up and over, it comes out to the audience in a perfect blend.  From the front of the house, it probably is the finest set-up anywhere in the world, but it's a sound that you have to get used to.  Every singer has had to go through that.  I was told about it so I knew what to expect, but it is a strange sensation that you have to accustom yourself to.

BD:    Does the voice come back at you at all, or does it go out and you feel it's lost out there?

JM:    It doesn't come back a great deal, no.  Generally, as I say, you have to just stick to your guns and sing the way you know you should be singing and not listen for yourself.

BD:    Tell me about the role of Isolde.  Was it new for you?

JM:    As Isolde goes I considered it new, but I had sung five previous productions for about 27 performances.  So for a role like Isolde, that is new.  Isolde is something that continues to grow, and one continues to learn from it and with it over a long period of time.  I remember the second production, which was in Toronto.  Birgit Nilsson was there for a gala concert, and she came back afterwords and I told her I was sorry she had come so early on to hear me so newly in the role.  She said she had done well over 200 performances and was still learning the role, finding out how to deal with it.  It's not something that you ever completely conquer.

BD:    Is this part of why the Bayreuth Festival asks artists back for several consecutive years in the same production?

JM:    Yes to a certain extent, but that is traditionally the way they work.  Unless some very unsatisfactory situation develops, they try to retain the original cast through the run of the production.

BD:    Had you ever sung Brangaene at all?

JM:    No, I've never sung mezzo roles.

BD:    How do you like working with René Kollo?

JM:    I had worked with him before at the Met.  We did Ariadne together so we knew one another.  He is a good colleague.

BD:    Do you find the blend of your voices the same at Bayreuth as at the Met?

JM:    I would say the blend probably is the same, but the works were so different.  Ariadne is such a different kind of work.  We actually end up with a very good blend.  He has a comparatively lyric sound, as I do, so the weight of the voices was very well balanced.  We were also physically well-matched.  He is a tall man which is helpful for me because I am a tall lady!

BD:    Do you have nightmares of getting a 5'4" tenor?

JM:    Oh, it's happened.  But you learn how to deal with it after a while.  I'd like to make it known that I'm singing Isolde

not as a hoch-dramatische soprano.  I do not consider myself a "heavy dramatic," and I doubt that I will ever be so.  I am what the Germans call a Jugendliche, which is a lyric soprano, and that was upsetting to some people over there, as it is to some people over here.  They have been accustomed in recent years to a Nilsson kind of sound.

BD:    There was no problem getting through the role with your voice?

JM:    None at all.  It's just that people have grown accustomed to associating that sound with Wagner.  I feel very strongly that audiences and critics who are thinking intellectually about Wagnerian performances have to go back and consider that Wagner did not write for what is now thought of as a Wagnerian voice.  Wagner wrote for Mozart-trained voices largely, which mine is.  What we have come to think of now as a Wagnerian sound basically did not exist in the time of Wagner.

BD:    I wonder if it existed in his mind?

JM:    One doesn't know.  I think the voices came into being as a result of the music rather than vice-versa.  At any rate, what I am trying to bring to my performances is the kind of Wagnerian singing that was done perhaps by Lilli Lehmann or people like that.  I'm not striving for, nor do I feel cheated that I don't have a big, steely kind of sound.  I think that there are other aspects of the role which can be brought out to a greater extent perhaps because I have a lighter and more flexible sound.

BD:    Are you a more introverted Isolde?

JM:    I don't think so in particular, no, but it's definitely more of a feminine Isolde, perhaps warmer because I am not singing with stentorian tone all the time.  For Isolde, it lends itself particularly well because even though the opera is very, very long, a lot of it is not heavily orchestrated.  There are maybe three really big orchestral moments, and much of the rest of it is page after page of lighter sounds.  So that is a point that I would like to draw to the attention of the public.  Since the time of Flagstad, audiences have come to expect the huge sound from these roles.  Perhaps the Brüunnhildes need the bigger sound, but certainly Isole can be sung lyrically.  I want to follow where my voice leads me.  I don't want to try to impose something on the instrument.  When I first began to sing after graduating from school, I went to Germany with the idea of getting repertoire experience in the small German houses.  They took one look at me and said I'd sing Wagner.  I told them maybe in 5 or 20 years, but not then.  I knew that if I started out singing Wagner, my voice would be gone in a couple of seasons.

BD:    Is this a constant problem

[Portions of two different articles about the Passion Play with photos added from other websites.]  One of Europe's oldest productions, the Passion Play — which recreates events during the last seven days of the life of Christ — was first presented on the American stage in 1932. It was brought to the United States from Germany by Josef Meier, who, until his retirement in 1991, continued to produce and direct the drama three nights a week from early June through the end of August in an ourdoor amphitheater in Spearfish, South Dakota. Known as the Black Hills Passion Play since 1939, when the company settled in Spearfish, the huge outdoor production features Roman soldiers on horseback, a camel caravan, and pigeons escaping from cages as merchants and moneylenders are driven from the Temple. The amphitheater, which seats 6,000, was built specifically for the Passion Play and claims to have the world's largest stage. A series of permanent sets are used to portray Bethany, the home of Mary and Martha; the palace of Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor; the Temple; the Garden of Gethsemane; the Tomb; and Mount Calvary. South Dakota The Black Hills Passion Play was performed every summer for almost seventy years in Spearfish, South Dakota; this production was an American version of the Lünen Passion Play that was brought over in 1932 by immigrants who claimed that it had been produced since 1242. The production was Americanized by seventh-generation Passion Player Josef Meier, who toured it around the country before bringing it to Spearfish in the 1930s; until its last performance on August 31, 2008, the show was produced under the auspices of Meier's daughter, Johanna, a world-famous opera singer who had her debut in the play at the age of five weeks. During the winter months from 1953 through 1998, the same cast also performed the play in Lake Wales, Florida.

BD:    Where was your first Isolde?

JM:    Mexico City.

BD:    Did the altitude bother you?

JM:    No.  I was fortunate because having been raised to a certain extent in the Black Hills of South Dakota, that's very high country.  So I was kind of accustomed to that.  I was originally scheduled to sing my first Isolde in Toronto.  That had come about through a Tosca production I did in Amsterdam with Lotfi Monsouri.  He came to me one day during rehearsal and asked if I would sing Isolde for him in Toronto.  I told him that I had always dreamed of singing the role but had not yet worked on it.  So I told him I would have to look at it and decide later.  I had been doing a lot of work necessary for my other roles, and I tried not to work too much on roles that I was not actually preparing.  So I was very pleased that he would ask me, and it gave me about a year and a half to prepare the role.  I was about half-way through my learning it when an offer came through to sing it in Mexico City.  I thought it would be a good place to try out the role and to learn about how to pace it in performance.

BD:    Who were your Tristans?

JM:    In Mexico it was the Finnish tenor Pentti Perksalo, and in Toronto it was Spas Wenkoff.  The Brangaene was Mignon Dunn, for which I will be eternally grateful because with all the hasty preparation I was coming directly from the two Rings in Seattle.  We had three days of rehearsals and then I was to sing my first Isolde.  Just remembering all the words was a task in itself because the part is so long.

BD:    Did you rely on the prompter?

JM:    We had no prompter.  What had been scheduled for us was an orchestral rehearsal with the singers just sitting on the stage concentrating on the music.  I thought this would be great to get it settled in my ear with the orchestra.

BD:    Did you sing or just mark?

JM:    I had intended to sing.  I arrived at the theater and the stage settings were in place, the orchestra was in the pit, and the director saw me and said "Ah, Señora Meier, you do as you like."

BD:    He was expecting you to simply recreate your previous performances?

JM:    That's right.  So as I say, it was very fortunately my good and generous colleague was Mignon Dunn who had done many Brangaenes.  She basically just walked me through the part, and for our three days of rehearsal we simply went through the entire opera three times on the stage.  By the third day we had a working idea of what I was going to do.  That was my first Isolde, three performances there.  It was received very well, and the main thing was that I knew I could sing my way through it and not be wiped out at the end.  I found that it was more than just a possible role for me, it was a comfortable role for me.  That took a great deal of the pressure off the production in Toronto, and when I went there a few months later, we had a normal rehearsal period.  We had a very nice production up there and it got me off on a good start in the role.  Then I did a series of them in England for the Welsh opera company, and then a production at La Fenice in Venice.  Then came the production in Seattle which I introduced, then finally in Bayreuth.  So it was a very fortunate progression for me.

BD:    Have you sung it in English?

JM:    No.

BD:    Would you?

JM:    I don't think so mainly because it is so long and there would be so much of it to learn.  My learning time is so limited and so precious now, and there are so many things that I have to prepare that I have to be very selfish about what I choose to learn.

BD:    Tell me about doing Sieglinde.

JM:    I like doing Sieglinde very much.  It was actually my first Wagnerian role.  I sang that a the Chautauqua festival in English.  I was interested to try it.  It was in a small theater and it worked very well.  I subsequently sang a great many of them across the country, and ultimately in Seattle.  I find her a very fascinating character and the role offers nice vocal challenges and a lot of acting and physical movement.  Another Wagnerian role of which I'm very fond of is Senta.

BD:    Have you done that one in both English and German?

JM:    No, just German.

BD:    How dreamy is that role?

JM:    Well, I think very.  I was a little startled seeing the production in Bayreuth, which is very far-out by our standards.  I have discovered that the Europeans tend to think of American productions as being very old-fashioned and we tend to think of theirs as being very far-out and bizarre.  Probably the truth lies somewhere in between.  But I did find myself a little uncomfortable with that Bayreuth production.  I, at least, was glad that I was not singing it because the poor Senta was onstage from the moment the curtain opened until it fell.

BD:    Would you then remember that so if you were offered that role in that production you'd turn it down?

JM:    Yes, quite.  She ended up singing some of the most difficult and crucial passages lying on her stomach and writhing all over the floor.  It just was not my idea of how a Senta should be treated.

BD:    Was the Tristan more to your liking?

JM:    Yes.  It was for them, evidently, a return to a somewhat more traditional production.  For me there were still some moments of stylization that I found a little difficult to cope with, but basically it was a production that leaned much more to the realistic.  It was, however, very heavily symbolic and there were aspects of it

              

This interview was recorded in a dressing room backstage at the Opera house in Chicago on November 10, 1981.  Segments were used (with recordings) on WNIB in 1993.  The transcription was made and much of it was published in Wagner News in the Summer issue of 1982.  It was re-edited and photos and other sections were added, and it was posted on this website in 2013.

To see a full list (with links) of interviews which have been transcribed and posted on this website, click here.

Award - winning broadcaster Bruce Duffie was with WNIB, Classical 97 in Chicago from 1975 until its final moment as a classical station in February of 2001.  His interviews have also appeared in various magazines and journals since 1980, and he now continues his broadcast series on WNUR-FM, as well as on Contemporary Classical Internet Radio.